China Science

Sleep apnea among commercial drivers may increase the risk of fall-asleep crashes, which incur large expenses. Drivers of passenger cars whose apnea is treated experience lower crash risk. Among community-based holders of commercial driver’s licenses, we considered three methods for identifying sleep apnea syndrome: (1) in-lab polysomnography; (2) selective in-lab polysomnography for high-risk drivers, where high risk is first identified by body mass index, age and gender, (more…)

ObjectivesTo describe a population of older drivers with driving restrictions, their most common restrictions, and to compare restricted drivers to their safe and unsafe counterparts. Safe drivers are those who do not commit hazardous errors or traffic violations. (more…)

Accident investigations influence public perceptions and safety management strategies by determining the amount and type of information learned about the accident. To examine the factors considered in investigations, this study used a content analysis of 100 consecutive media reports of amusement ride accidents from an online media archive. (more…)

In order to better understand the underlying crash mechanisms, left-turn crashes occurring at 197 four-legged signalized intersections over 6 years were classified into nine patterns based on vehicle maneuvers and then were assigned to intersection approaches. (more…)

Driver distraction is a major cause of traffic accidents, with mobile telephones as a key source of distraction. In two studies, we examined distraction of pedestrians associated with mobile phone use. (more…)

Based on estimates from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), there were about 25,000 baby walker-related injuries treated annually in U.S. hospital emergency departments during the early 1990s. This amounted to about 8 injuries for every 1000 baby walkers in use. Most injuries resulted from falls down stairs. (more…)

New evidence has appeared to support the fact that the over-involvement of older drivers in traffic accidents disappears when the low mileage bias is taken into account. As a group, older drivers are as safe as or safer than other age groups, and only low mileage older drivers have a high crash rate. Furthermore, the role of the medical condition of older drivers in traffic accidents, as well as the fitness to drive evaluation, are objects of controversy. We examined all this with a cohort of 4316 drivers attending Medical Driving Test Centres for a mandatory fitness to drive evaluation. (more…)

Most crash severity studies ignored severity correlations between driver–vehicle units involved in the same crashes. Models without accounting for these within-crash correlations will result in biased estimates in the factor effects. This study developed a Bayesian hierarchical binomial logistic model to identify the significant factors affecting the severity level of driver injury and vehicle damage in traffic crashes at signalized intersections. Crash data in Singapore were employed to calibrate the model. Model fitness assessment and comparison using intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) and deviance information criterion (DIC) ensured the suitability of introducing the crash-level random effects. (more…)